I wake up after very few hours of rest. There’s still steam coming out of my ears, the tracker is still at the same address where they came to rest last night. Why did they take a tracker? Do they not know what a tracker is? I know where they’re holding my property, just give it back already! I’m waiting anxiously for them to return to their place of employment, the Science Museum.
We have breakfast before we head out on our day of adventure. When I check the tracker again, at 8am on a Saturday morning, it’s at a factory building on the westernmost point of Hong Kong. It stays there, and does not move until 4.30pm.
We take a different bus today than yesterday, and get off at the Science Museum. The staff of course say that no tracker was logged in their lost and found yesterday, so there’s nothing they can do, even if the tracker didn’t leave their premises until 10.30pm. I show them the person’s address, their second assumed job site, but they’re not impressed. I’m given a phone number, and I leave them mine.
By now, we’re hungry. We take a quick loop around the neighbourhood, and remember our first impressions from 13 years ago, and then settle in at a noodle restaurant. I requested the noodle restaurant, but they have a picture on their menu of slow braised pork belly with rice, and I cannot resist. The girls share a noodle soup, and Joe gets his childhood favourite of noodle soup with fish slices and fish balls.
We head west after lunch, on foot, through streets that get more and more familiar, until we hit Nathan Road. Our goal for today is to introduce the girls to Kowloon Park, as we didn’t quite get all the way there last time we came this way.
It’s quite a large park, hidden right in the middle of Kowloon. It’s surrounded by regular busy Hong Kong life, with high rise buildings, businesses and people everywhere. Inside the park, it’s quite peaceful!
The first thing that greets us at the top of the stairs, is a turtle pond, complete with pagoda! When I came here the first time in 2006 with my friend Betty, we saw two or three turtles. Back in 2013 with Joe, we saw a handful more. Today, it’s craziness, the turtles are covering every surface in and along the ponds. Multiple ponds! The are resting along the rock walls, and every scrap of every piece of debris in the water.
The park is quite large, and we take a spin around the aviary as well. There are benches with couples and families enjoying a leisurely Saturday afternoon in the sunshine. We also find a large playground, where the girls enjoyed running around and playing. We gave them a time limit today though, wouldn’t want a repeat of Maylin’s crash out after the last time she played for an hour in the sunshine…
There’s also a huge swimming pool complex attached to the park, with both indoor and outdoor pools. The outdoor ones were in the process of being painted as we walked by, and the entrance to the indoor sections were busy with people. Maybe we’ll come and check it out some day?
After exploring all that the park had to offer, we headed back towards Nathan Road. Joe needs pants, I need pants, and we are freezing in the apartment, missing our big hoodies that we like hiding in at home. We go back to the Miraplace mall and head to Uniqlo, where I succeed in finding a pair of pants, Joe does as well, and after a browse around the store, we find the sale section, where only XXL, 3X and 4X sizes are left, of gloriously soft fleece jackets. We try them on and decide that they will do the job. Bonus? They cost next to nothing!
After that feat, as we both strongly dislike actual shopping, we need a treat. Joe looks up what’s available on Google Maps, and we start looking for the 6th floor. We find Hiroshi tucked away in a back corner, and sit down for a treat. Maylin chooses a matcha parfait, Téa a vanilla sundae with chocolate cake pieces and almond brittle. Joe gets a coffee of some sort, and I opt for a green tea. The small thimble they put in front of me is why I will probably never come back. HK$30 for THAT? I’ve always been a “I take my tea extra large” kind of girl…
We had planned to have sticky rice for dinner yesterday (Joe makes an excellent version, I prefer it to most restaurants), but of course arrived home way too late. Today though, we are home in plenty of time, and Joe gets cooking. Soon, we have fragrant and sticky rice, full of dried shrimp and Chinese sausage, all ready to be wrapped in crisp and refreshing lettuce leaves. Yum!
I move into my XXL fleece the same night. Téa got her Uniqlo furry jacket in light brown back in Osaka, and Maylin got her dark blue one here during the first week, I think. Finally the whole family can be warm and cozy at home!
Maylin’s tracker has not been back to the Science Museum, but it has had dinner at a restaurant, visited the place they stopped at before going home last night, and are now back at home. Hmmm… Wonder when they’ll be back at the museum? I want my tracker back!
At what point do they decide there are too many turtles? Did you figure out how they were all fed?
That oasis in the middle of chaos sounds wonderful.